Register to Attend! 'Life in Three Dimensions': An Interview with Shigehiro Oishi in Milwaukee
January 09, 2025
A FREE EVENT in Milwaukee, Wisconsin! Don't miss out on this conversation with the developer of the "psychological richness" approach to living.
Register now for our upcoming in-person author interview with Shigehiro Oishi, author of Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life.
Join us at Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee, WI on Tuesday, February 4, 2025, 6:30pm CST.
→ Pre-order a copy of the book from our event partner, Boswell Books. Signed copies available!
→ If you need copies for your book club, organization, or clients, we at Porchlight Book Company offer competitive discounts on all bulk book purchases.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST-READ BOOK • From one of our foremost psychologists, a trailblazing book that turns the idea of a good life on its head and urges us to embrace the transformative power of variety and experience
For many people, a good life is a stable life, a comfortable life that follows a well-trodden path. This is the case for Shigehiro Oishi's father, who has lived in a small mountain town in Japan for his entire life, putting his family's needs above his own, like his father and grandfather before him. But is a happy life, or even a meaningful life, the only path to a good life?
In Life in Three Dimensions, Shige Oishi enters into a debate that has animated psychology since 1984, when Ed Diener (Oishi's mentor) published a paper that launched happiness studies. A rival followed in 1989 with a model of a good life that focused on purpose and meaning instead. In recent years, Shige Oishi's award-winning work has proposed a third dimension to a good life: psychological richness, a concept that prioritizes curiosity, exploration, and a variety of experiences that help us grow as people.
Life in Three Dimensions explores the shortcomings of happiness and meaning as guides to a good life, pointing to complacency and regret as a "happiness trap" and narrowness and misplaced loyalty as a “meaning trap.” Psychological richness, Oishi proposes, balances the other two, offering insight and growth spurred by embracing uncertainty and challenges.
In a lively style, drawing on a generation of psychological studies and on examples from famous people, books and film, Oishi introduces a new path to a fuller, more satisfying life with fewer regrets.